Adagio and Rondo concertante in F major D487 (1816)

According to Therese Grob, the first and apparently most serious love of Schubert’s short life, the Adagio and Rondo concertante was written for a pianist brother of hers. If that is true – and the work certainly dates from the time before Therese was persuaded to marry someone else – it would explain why he scored it as he did. Far from emulating the integrated textures of Mozart’s two works for the same ensemble, the most distinguished examples of the form he could have known at the time, he presents it as a showpiece for piano with accompanying string trio.

Mozart was on Schubert’s mind but not so much for guidance on piano-quartet balance as for melodic inspiration – or so it seems when, after the opening gestures, the violin introduces an echo of the slow movement of the Clarinet Concerto as the main theme of the Adagio. And, while the violin is generally more liberated than the viola and cello, the presentation of that first theme is the major responsibility entrusted to the strings throughout the wole work. The brilliantly and entertainingly written solo part awards the piano the introduction of not only the (again) Mozartian first theme of the Rondo but also the more abundant material of the following episode. Actually a sonata-form structure without a development, the Rondo is divided into two equal halves, one a repeat of the other and each one ending with a quasi-orchestral coda.